


as trouble ought to do

by nomind



Category: Good Girls (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Breaking Up & Making Up, Cheating, F/M, Feelings, Love Confessions, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Post-Season/Series 03, Smut, Vaginal Fingering, Vaginal Sex, mentions of beth dating a rando, mentions of beth fucking randos, shockingly canon-compliant, the cheating does not refer to beth on rio or rio on beth just fyi
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-17 04:26:32
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 5,512
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29094195
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nomind/pseuds/nomind
Summary: There are no words for missing a man you shot.There are no words for missing a man you loved with your whole heart, but never told, only begged not to leave.Beth knows she was no good for him. If she’s honest, surprise was not a factor in his leaving.You can’t love the woman who tried to kill you.Certainly,shecan’t love the woman who tried to kill him. Can’t bear it. Can’t.She can only miss him.No one can make sense of it, least of all her. But they were not for others to understand. They had each other. Peering at his eyes from the warmth of his embrace, finding so much—absolution, release, love, love, love.OR post s3, beth and rio fall in love. deeply. and then rio leaves. welcome to heart/ache/loneliness.
Relationships: Beth Boland/Original Character(s), Beth Boland/Rio
Comments: 61
Kudos: 112





	1. but if you go away

**Author's Note:**

> here, have some brio angst, as a treat. in other words: i finished warm water and needed a new outlet for all my angsty feelings

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> hi connie converse’s lyrics made me cry and im taking it out on brio. welcome to a post s3 mess. idk what im doing and im not gonna stick to the way i usually set up chapters, so there’s that.

_but if you go away, as trouble ought to do / where will i find another soul to tell my trouble to?_  
—connie converse, trouble 

(i.)

Clutching the bourbon like the last solace in the earthly realms, and not for the first time this week either, Beth studies the lines in the shiny, dark wood of the bar. 

Is it oak? It could be oak. She never paid attention much before he— _before_.

Wasn’t any need for it, pondering the material used to craft the bar, much too preoccupied with the man resting his chin on the palm of his hand and staring at her bemusedly every time she came here. The one who so easily shared a drink with her, despite all pretense. The one who would laugh so openly, once she discovered how to crawl into him like a warm bed after a tiring day, primmed for the comfort it will bring.

And isn’t that the worst prospect—going back home to a bed as empty as the glass tumbler pressing against her fingers, achingly void of the presence of the man she loves with more than she thought she possessed after the worn out decades of marriage to another? 

If only she could forget the feeling of his body plastered against hers, the heat to his nearness, the sense of rightness and belonging lulling her to sleep every night. If only he left her mind alone and danced out of reach of her foolish musing, her longing fed by liquor and nighttime.

And he was so beautiful. So, so beautiful. Always, but particularly so in the late night quiet of a bedroom. His lashes landing soft as he sank to slumber, the lines of his face kind in the midnight hour, his lips swollen after the thorough kisses lathered on them. Her nose in the crook of his neck for lack of despair, taking her fill of lively lust and love.

She’s caged by the desperate feeling of wanting him near (always, always). Taken in by the hollow cold of his absence, Beth fears the wild rein given to the memory of him leaving.

_“I have to go.”_

_“Will I see you tomorrow?”_

_“No, Elizabeth. I’m leaving. Detroit. You.”_

_His voice stilts on it. Her throat sits painfully heavy._

_“Don’t,” she whispers, petrified as she hears what he’s saying. He nods. Then shakes his head._

_“I have to.”_

_“Why?”_

_She doesn’t understand. Business has been fine. Their love—words never spoken, only powerfully pushing through everything they did—robust, weathering their past with surprising grace. The many missteps a swirling dance of inching closer to each other, until they were chest to chest. Despite their cruelties, their hurt. The ignition of lust when he first took her again after lung, spleen, shoulder, pushing into her body after a deal gone horribly right, eyes meeting, everything else inevitable, insuppressible—_

_“I can’t do this with you here.”_

_“Can’t do what?”_

_“Can’t work, can’t think, can’t—”_

_Finally, a note of hurt and desperation to his voice—but it does little to soothe the future he’s painting. Carving out. Away from her._

_“Where.” It’s a question, but she doesn’t let it curl up._

_“Miami.”_

_She frowns. “Miami?”_

_Edging closer to him only to watch him recoil away from her sets something inside to go missing, a torrent of hurt gone spiraling all sides, bleeding everywhere._

_“Rio,” she urges._

_“I don’t want to do this.”_

_His eyes are honest, full, honey and bite, pure and blister. Merciful while dabbling cruelty. Sword stuck, torch used._

_“Then why?”_

_Surely he must understand he can’t do this. Surely he knows how deeply she loves him by now, the way she holds onto who he is, who they are, what he bring out of her._

_He’s quiet. Peering at her, taking it in._

_She stands, bar stool wobbling against her thigh. Wants to pull him close and yank at his heart to make him see—reason? Love? Another future?—but not here. Not in this bar, naked to all patrons._

_He follows her to the alley out back. Lets her clutch his shoulders, bury her face in his chest. Wraps his arms around her, providing shelter so painful in its impending loss._

_“Don’t leave me,” she whispers._

_“I don’t want to leave you,” he admits. “I have to leave you.”_

_“I don’t understand.”_

_Tears come tearing at her, ready to trouble her vision further._

_“Elizabeth, look at me.”_

_She refuses, clinging to him more._

_“Baby.”_

_Giving in, she meets his eyes torrid with unnameable pain._

_“You are everything to me. Everything. But I gotta leave you. My bosses…” He looks away. “They don’t appreciate how distracted I’ve been.”_

_“Distracted?”_

_Breathless, she’s breathless. Nothing left to save._

_“I can’t do this and be with you.”_

_The words are whispered. A confession he’d rather not make._

_“I don’t… Rio, I don’t understand. Please, please don’t do this.”_

_“Being with you has been…”_

_Her mouth gapes on its own accord, a silent plea to let her hear the end of that sentence, but he snaps it in half, swallows it down._

_Silence leaves them staring, stained, stuck._

_He tries again._

_“I don’t want to leave you. If it were up to me—”_

_“Isn’t it?”_

_“No. Baby, please. Please understand this is not—it’s not something I want to do. It’s something I have to do.”_

_She takes in the different emphasis like talons sinking into skin._

_“For how long?”_

_Hope in her claws, tearing through his flesh._

_“Please don’t ask me that. I can’t promise you—”_

_“Bull.”_

_He meets her eyes, his incredulity mirroring hers._

_“After everything? Really, there’s no future? None?”_

_“Don’t make this harder than it is, Elizabeth.”_

_He’s stern. Exhausted. In pain, and the fact that she can tell makes her see the injustice of it all the more._

_The soaring of a motorcycle’s engine, jazz flittering from a cracked window, and the noise from the bar accompanies them as the beginning of the end settles._

_“You’re really leaving?” she asks._

_He nods in silence. Moves a hand to her face. Follows her tear tracks with his pinky. Moves in closer. Kisses her, gently, his plump lips hot against her mouth. For the last time._

_She swallows. Forcibly unclenches, her prey living another day to taunt her from afar, skittering out of reach._

_“Say it again.”_

_“I’m leaving.”_

_“Say it again.”_

_“I’m leaving Detroit.”_

_“Say it again.”_

_“I’m leaving you.”_

“Refill?”

It’s a man. His body perched against the oak she’s settled on, his eyes scanning her body with quick movements. It’s not the man she wishes would look at her like that, would be near her like that.

No, the man she wants to accompany her here (everywhere), left her.

Still.

“I think I’m ready for something stronger,” she tells the man, pointedly eyeing his biceps, the bulging muscles clad in a green Henley. 

He flashes a smile.

“Wanna join me?”

“Where?” she asks, not caring for the answer.

Ten minutes later, they’re in his car and he’s stuffing her cunt with three of his fingers, noisily kissing her neck. The distinct lack of beard prickling her skin make her blink up at the ceiling, the foreign feeling of smooth skin sliding against hers somewhat unnerving.

Shaking herself out of it, she grabs his thick cock, rubbing her thumb over the head.

“Put it in,” he urges, taking his fingers out of her pussy.

She sinks down on him with slow movements, closing her eyes to savor it, and because she can’t stand the sight of it not being Rio she’s impaling herself on.

All she can think about as she bounces up and down is Rio.

Rio with his mouth open, eyes closed, head thrown back, moaning as she clenches around him. Rio tightening his hands, gripping her hips, leaving bruises. Rio telling her all about how he loves her pussy, how he thought about doing this all day, how he’s gonna lick her clean after.

She comes with her eyes shut tight.

(ii.)

Cheek glazed with the prints the rough couch cushions left, eyes red-rimmed, she clocks the early rise of sun come morning. Quietly taking in how birds and neighbors begin bustling about as her heart still clings to night.

She made a home out of him. She did. 

Worse, he let her. 

Welcomed her, body lax, heart warmed, mind primed.

She doesn’t understand.

Honest, daunting intimacy their usual partner in crime, ever since the first night they had sex again after— _after_. Laying in his naked arms, the lust wearing her down, easing her body into candid openness, meeting his eyes and just—spilling truths, back and forth, back and forth.

For him to just _leave_ after their almost, after their not-quite, after their tacit love? 

It leaves her shattered.

And so jarringly alone, and narrowly warm, the heat of him—of what they were—nothing but a contrast to the cold sheets she returns to every night since he traded Detroit for Miami.

It’s why she turned to the couch, unable to face the bed she shared with the man she loves after letting another one fuck her.

She could lie. To herself. Just in the privacy of her lonesome home in a restless morning. Play at not missing him. 

But that, even that, is too much, the harsh daybreak demanding a facing of the truth.

It takes her six weeks to switch up the habit of filling her cunt with some other man while thinking about him.

(iii.)

There are no words for missing a man you shot. 

There are no words for missing a man you loved with your whole heart, but never told, only begged not to leave.

Beth knows she was no good for him. If she’s honest, surprise was not a factor in his leaving. 

You can’t love the woman who tried to kill you. 

Certainly, _she_ can’t love the woman who tried to kill him. Can’t bear it. Can’t.

She can only miss him.

No one can make sense of it, least of all her. But they were not for others to understand. They had each other. Peering at his eyes from the warmth of his embrace, finding so much—absolution, release, love, love, love. 

She’d do it all over again, for moments like that. Undo a myriad of sins, while she's at it. No lung. Definitely no spleen or shoulder. 

But she doesn’t get another go. He is only a story now.

(iv.)

Months pass by like heavy clouds dragging rain through the land. Annie begs. Ruby begs. _Dean_ begs. But she can’t. Can’t explain what they were, can’t go back to before, can’t move on after, can only let the cold wash over again and again until lukewarm seems sizzling hot, so used to the chill.

Which is how she winds up dating Raymond. Quite some time, too, but the passage thereof is not something Beth registers anymore.

She’s not sure how she managed to con her way into that particular relationship either. She’s just floating along like plastic in a river carried by the stream. Completely out of place, moving anyway. With Raymond.

Raymond, who doesn’t know the Beth she was before. Who doesn’t recognize her absence. Who’s a nice, shiny distraction, a nice man and a nice fuck but really, just another version of Dean. Clean-cut, childless, less diminishing, but still—loud, social, magnetic but superficial. Raymond, whose presence in her life appears to be enough to warrant a visit from the old flame that torched her life, soul, self like no other.

And burst ablaze she does. The very minute he slides into the bar stool next to hers, she’s smoke, heat. All of her smolders.

“Elizabeth.” 

A tired note to his voice. When she lifts her head, she finds something resigned but pulsing in his eyes. 

“Rio.”

His name tastes so good in her mouth. She hasn’t allowed herself the indulgence in months.

“Why is it I always find you here?”

“I’m here because I always find you here,” she responds without missing a beat.

It’s a lie. She’s tried for months, hoping he’d come looking for her here. Hoping one day he’d slide into the barstool next to hers and let her love him again. How many nights did she sit here, wasting away, letting her love grow asunder—only to find it beating, whole, alive, ready to take her in its intensity the next morning?

He’s never here. Not anymore. 

But this time he showed.

He showed. 

God, she can’t believe it. He’s really here. Handsome and tired-looking and _here_.

“How’s the boyfriend,” he asks, eyes sinking over her body.

Beth swallows. Figures.

“Doesn’t matter.”

He works his jaw.

“Is that right?”

She nods.

“So he’s not expecting you home anytime soon?”

“What’s it matter.” 

Shoving hope aside, Beth focuses on her breath. Evening it. Not chugging his scent with every mouthful of air.

It’s quiet.

“It didn’t matter when it was Dean. What’s it matter, now?” she insists, smothered in a flush of feelings she denies outside of this bar.

He scoffs.

“Now, there’s been me.”

God.

“You don’t get to just move on from me. Not you. Not after what we had,” he spells out, vehemence licking his tone.

He talks like she _can_ move on from him. Like she wants to. It’s the funniest thing he’s ever said to make her cry.

“What do you care. You don’t want me anymore,” she whispers, eyes wet and zeroing in on the oak.

“Baby.”

“Don’t,” she bites, stirring in her seat, heart beating fast, faster.

“Baby,” he repeats.

She looks at him.

“You know that’s not true.”

His voice is flat, but she hears him beg her to believe him. He wants her to believe him.

“How can I know that? You left.”

Her voice cracks. Like pavement. But there are no flowers to make it worthwhile. He left. 

“You left,” she repeats.

A warm hand clutches hers on top of the oak. Fingers delicately touching hers, as if dauntingly questing for tangling—tangling she can’t allow, because her desperate want-need-want for it is too big.

“I didn’t want to.”

“But you did! You left! You left me!” she bursts, unable to keep—anything—any shape—any semblance of—control, composure, sensible distance.

“I know.”

“You _don’t_ know,” she bites, because he doesn’t.

“You don’t what you’re talking about. You have no idea what hole I had to pull myself out of because you left.”

Her past tense mocks her.

“You think this was easy for me?” he hisses, voice dangerously low. “You think I didn’t think about you every single day? You think I love you any less, now?”

Her eyes widen.

“What?”

“What,” he parrots, voice dulled, brows tight.

“You love me?”

It’s been close to a year. The worst of her life. But he makes her turn back and look at it again, reconsider. After all, if he loved her this year—in spineless silence, distressing distance—it can’t be the worst year of her life.

“Yes. Why do you think I left?”

“Because you—because you didn’t?”

“Love me,” she adds after a silence.

Love makes logic sound irresponsible.

“Elizabeth. How could you think that? You—” 

“How could I think that? You never _told_ me. God, Rio.”

How many times did she lay in his arms, recalling their wandering around the truth, never facing it head-on? How many times did they laugh about their passionate commitments to denial? How many times must they learn fatality and stumble into another beginning, a new _after_?

“Let’s go,” he suggests, suddenly off his seat.

“Rio.” 

Her voice is stern. He quiets his.

“Just—come with me, Elizabeth.”

(v.)

Quiet, it’s quiet. Only their breaths, the creaking of the stairs under their weight, the muted sounds from the bar. Her erratic heart leaves her taking deep tugs of stagnant air. 

He’s here. He’s here. He’s here.

She loves him. 

He’s here and she loves him.

The feeling—knowledge, truth—withers little with time, she’s found. Hibernation at most, but even that is stretching it. It wakes fully in his presence, persistent and indignant like dew clinging to dawn.

Their eyes meet. She loves him.

(vi.)

“You’re mine, baby,” he pants.

“I know,” she sighs, pleased, sad, hands dragging over his shoulders, clutching at him, needing him closer, deeper.

“I’m yours,” he tells her as he leans over her, her face bracketed by his palms.

Pleasant heat takes hold at his words, the sight of his face like a flame, tender, focused, elusive. He can’t look away from her.

His eyes promise the night—she knows he’ll love on her body until the morning, not unlike the way he used to after coming back to her from business trips or tense meetings, not seeking rest until their mutual collapse called it.

As bad—wrong—unfaithful—terrible—as it may be, she answers his look in kind, eagerness spreading through her, guilt swept aside, for now, here, because he’s here and it’s him and there’s only him and he never—he always—he—

(vii.)

He unstitches all of her. 

The whole year falls, dripping, her cheeks wet, her body primed for his, her heart in his, sinking easily.

She goes willingly. 

(viii.)

They find the office, where a beige, plush-looking leather coach sits waiting for them, waiting for her to lay down on it, tug his body on top of hers, and kiss him, kiss him, kiss him.

Both cry out when he finally sinks into her. Pussy glistening for him, skin hot, breaths uneven—he takes her hard, fast, desperate, honest. It’s everything she needed.

He gasps. She licks into his mouth. He clings to her.

She loves him.

(ix.)

“What’s different now?”

“Nothing, I—you have a boyfriend.”

“No. Yes. I mean—” 

“I know you have a boyfriend.”

“Yes, but—” 

“But what?”

“But he’s not you.” 

(x.)

“Don’t you see I’m no good for you?”

There’s so much sorrow in his voice. On his features. He takes her face in both hands as he rolls his hips slowly.

“Don’t you see you’re all I want? Please. Please, Rio,” she hiccups, overstimulated, her body raw, her face soaked in tears, despair, hope. 

Naked nerve after naked nerve after naked nerve exposed to his scrutiny. She’s lost. Silence chaffing at her. She knows—knows, knows, knows—they can’t go back and find what they want the same place he left her.

Any resulting love would be—stained, a gap where something pure should be. All they could do is cling to their fearless _almost_. 

“Kiss me,” she whispers, because this he can do.

He pulls her to him, moving his lips to hers. She wraps her legs around his waist.

“Please don’t fall in love with him,” he asks her, slowly tracing her face.

“I promise,” she says, unwavering, his request as unjust as her willingness to oblige is fierce.

She can’t look away. Eyes stuck to his face as he fucks her. Helpless gasps, whimpers, a choir in the room. Bodies trembling, catching the blow.

“I can love you better than money or freedom.”

Whatever Miami promises him.

The words slip. Their promise uncertain, but she knows— _knows_ —her fucking intentions. She could love him—try to—give—be—become—just— _love_ him.

“What makes you think I deserve that?”

(xi.)

Rio talks in his sleep. It was one of the first things she learned about him after they fell in bed together again.

It was a delight to find out, his body sprawled in her bed, face slack, sudden noise spilling into the room. Fluttering sentences, brief cries, shimmering emotion—barely, barely—poking through.

He murmurs, softly, inadvertently into her palm, as the sun rises.

“Can’t.”

She strokes his forehead. Knows his mutterings hold little meaning outside his dreamless sleep. Wishes he’d utter anything less gloom nonetheless.

“Please stay,” Beth whispers to his sleeping form, caressing his face. Hoping somewhere deep down he will take her words to heart.

His heart, where there appears to be room for hers—but that’s all. Heartspace. Nothing tangible. 

She knows he’ll leave her again.

The leather sticks to her sweat-slick body, clumsy dawn scurrying into the blinds-clad window as she stirs, finally giving into sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was feeling reckless. and so i wrote this story.
> 
> all mistakes are my own doing / you can find me on tumblr at inyoursheets / i am going to bed and avoid this
> 
> but! how are we feeling?


	2. this is the way the world ends

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> there is a chance the hurt does not cease

_this is the way the world ends  
this is the way the world ends  
this is the way the world ends  
not with a bang but a whimper._  
—t.s. eliot, the hollow men

(xiii.)

His body, warmth sticking to it, stays unnervingly close, beyond expectation, beyond the morning—funny thing about fucking well into the dawn: the day gets an enraging start, jump, friction. 

His lashes with a tremor, telling on him.

His voice hoarse as he tells her good morning, like it’s morning, like there’s anything good about a day that will end with him leaving.

She rouses. Fury fluttering away, just out of reach, at the sight of his eyes, mellow and burning, the kind of fire that tempts a touch.

She utters his name. Without question, without intention beyond just—wrapping her lips around his syllables again, the way she couldn’t before.

Infuriation tilts her body when she realizes, all the way, he’s here, here, here, which means—

No, he doesn’t leave. What he does is worse. 

He lingers. 

Lets her see him after slumber. Naked, soft, eyes unguarded. The similarity to their previously shared mornings is a strike to her face.

“Rio.”

His thumb rubs the veins on her wrists, eyes trained on his tracing of the blues in her skin. His presence pouring into her like an unjust but dedicated storm.

_Don’t let me have this, don’t let me have this._

“Elizabeth.”

_Don’t let me feel this and give me back to loneliness after._

She clutches his hand.

_Don’t leave me._

It’s there, on the wet of her lips. Can’t—say it, think it, really, feel it.

“I know,” he sighs. 

It’s her turn. To know. To give in to the inevitable future. To admit—love, lust, loss. Hope. 

Defeat, defeat, defeat.

The street rushes close, windows trembling with impact of a passerby’s haste. The sound gives her an excuse to avoid his eyes when he lifts her hand to his face and presses a soft kiss onto her skin.

“I have to go.”

Yeah. He does.

He leaves.

(xiv.)

Hope, the last victim of value, left her lying there, waiting for him to return. Far longer than she should have, in full awareness that was in vain. Still, she didn’t leave, dress, _move_ until she heard footsteps downstairs, finally admitting he wouldn’t return and that she didn’t want to flash whoever the office belongs to.

She drags herself home with something like moroseness pumping her blood. Finds her empty, cold, empty bed. Buries herself in it. Going as far as forgetting the day is awake. Doesn’t think about anything but him, the way he filled her, the way he talked to her, the way he touched her. The pain in his eyes, eyes she’s waited for for months, so ardently, shocked by the hurt there.

She—can’t—fight it—anymore. 

(xv.)

She breaks up with her boyfriend. The one she shouldn’t have had in the first place.

He stares at her. Asks her why. Again. Recognizes the platitudes for what they are, waves them off, demands the truth.

She says she’s still hung up on her ex.

He frowns. Says he thought she hated Dean.

When she tells him it’s a different ex, she gets her own blank stare mirrored back. The one she can hold until Raymond leaves, and then it’s just—a silence chock-full of desolation.

Only void. Chasms of _not him_.

To think she thought of him as cruel before. It’s nothing like being swarmed with vivid recollection of his touch amidst his absence.

It’s not long before desperation claws. 

Scratched all over her—her—heart? Mind? Does it matter? 

That’s the view now. All she sees as the sun drops. All she can take in. Meandering scars of her own doing, because she waited for him in that bar, she let him take her upstairs, she let him touch her like he loved her.

She wants him. To love and to love her back.

More so, she wants out of this silence, his absence.

(xvi.)

She gets her wishes granted within a month. He rings her doorbell. An act that unnerves.

Eyes wide, wild, he looks—desperate. 

He says nothing. Just stares at her in her doorframe for a beat, before hurrying inside, slamming the door shut and kissing her wordlessly, hands immediately finding hips, shoulder blades, places to land. His urgency forceful. His dedication like harvest—unstoppable, and beautifully necessary.

“Rio,” she shows her surprise.

“Baby,” he mutters. “Please.”

_Let me._

She knows what he’s asking. Meets his honest eyes. Moves her arms around his broad shoulders and jumps up, wrapping her legs around his waist, unsure how to be any clearer about her willingness to let him have her.

She doesn’t know where he has come from. She doesn’t know when he will leave. 

All she knows is this: she wants him and she loves him and she misses him so much she cries on her nights without the kids. She can’t think about anything beyond those three things while he is within reach.

So she lets him. 

Lets her hands roam his body, cling to him. Lets herself kiss him, over, over, over, and over. 

They float to her bedroom together, _holding hands_ , and it’s that detail that thrills her endlessly, shocks her system with biting affection for him. His hand is warm, swallows hers as he tightens his grip, like her running off is a pressing concern of his right now.

He presses his lips everywhere, kissing all over her skin. Touches her with quiet hunger.

Bare bodies sticking close in her sheets—and God, how can she even be in this room after this?—with his warm hands cradling the back of her head, her jaw. 

His eyes are on her face. Blatant love spilling its guts.

It doesn’t take long before she cries, and she can’t tell if it’s being on the receiving end of his focused movements and quiet dedication or him being near at all.

(xvii.)

There’s another morning to shield her eyes from. Then another. And another. Until that’s how it goes. 

He leaves her, again, again, then comes back—rushed, split by guilt but tethered to her anyway, wanting her regardless of reason and defeat—and kisses her, fucks her, holds her tight until the morning brings sense.

It’s over, she reminds herself when she’s in his arms. They can’t have this, she thinks when she kisses down his chest. There’s no future of them, she knows, as she takes him inside of her, again, again, again.

His presence is fickle at best.

It is only safe when nighttime crawls amidst their tumultuous everything. With lights out they’re—something. Barely, but something. Something present. 

That’s what it forces her to be. Pleasure only found in the now, in bodies that seek justice for what their minds intend to look away from.

It’s morning (any, every) when fear and suppressible rage take hold in equal measure. 

But the cup of love skips night nor daylight, daybreak, the dawn as it cracks—with it, any illusions between them.

The silence stifles in a taunting manner. Almost enough to draw her out and do some damage: watch as the light peels at the heart of it all, basking in its simple precision. Tell him it’s not enough. She wants a love that’s full, or at least expectant.

But no, they share the tendency. Prolonging the ease by letting truth fester unspoken, committed to denial’s temporary fruit.

Will they always be like this? Lurching for their love but tearing away after the intensity of their combusting? The haste staggering, obliging the rot?

She didn’t fully realize her overlooking of time before. Before he left, they had murky… everything, but at least they had time. It was the canvas they could litter with fraught attempts at honesty and affection. No label of sufficiently sticky caliber, or three words shared out loud, but: time. Time to love.

It’s unnamable these days. They can’t tame it either. Worse, a river swaying closer.

But now—a storm?

No. Bigger than a storm. A flood, maybe. Try drawing the lines of what they are and she’ll be left a fool with mud up to her chest. 

Now he tears himself away from her with a vehemence that asserts itself as final. Coming back to her weeks later to have her again. Brief bouts and then he leaves. The destructive dirt of the in-between is not something she likes to think about.

Sometimes his knuckles are scraped and he doesn’t speak. Other times he tells her how much he dreams of her and holds her while she cries.

Leaving is the only consistency.

She lets him get away with it, the way he lets her get away with everything, too.

(xviii.)

If I can name a hurt, does that mean it will pack its bags and leave me alone?

When has that ever worked? When has calling someone’s name ever made them turn around and _leave_?

Oh, but you did.

(xix.)

One night he comes earlier, stays longer, lets the sun flick him with oranges and reds while he eats dinner with her. They sit outside on her picnic bench, shoveling gentle bites of salad and peaches inside, sharing a quiet that eases. He laughs with her when the leaves of green go past her mouth, dwindle their way into her cleavage. He helps her fish them out then presses his soft lips against the swell of her breast. 

Their eyes meet.

With immediacy, they find their way to her bedroom, fleshing out their stunned lust—his mouth hot, her eyes wide, and she’s naked before she registers what’s happening. He reverently lays her down on the bed, kissing her skin all over, and it briefly feels like she can have him, all of him, like before.

He growls while he eats her cunt, playfully bites at the skin of her thighs, and she wonders what happened that she gets to see him like this, unwilling to disturb his light mood by asking. She doesn’t know what she did to deserve to share joy with him without the heaviness of his inevitable leaving crowding them. Still, gratitude spills through her, pleased they haven’t outgrown this buoyant sweetness that drags them through the night like a partner excitedly asking for a dance.

Body giddy, face open, he gorges on her with pride and satisfaction, lying between her spread legs.

She wants to keep him there forever.

(xx.)

She has a breaking point.

It’s in July. The heat doesn’t pair well with the tears.

“Don’t tell me goodbye again. Don’t love me only to leave me.”

Her voice does not tremble. Words aimed at the back of his neck. Arms wrapped around his body. She presses her face to his sweaty back.

She can’t do it anymore. Doesn’t want anyone else, but can’t stay tethered to him like this anymore either. This love is too loud, this hopelessness so wide. She wonders whether this is when it will spit her out onto the land where she will have to learn to walk again. Legs trembling persistently, but bringing her to something solid, perhaps. Floodless. 

“Elizabeth.” 

She closes her eyes when she feels him turn around. Doesn’t open them until his hand finds her cheek.

He looks almost as hurt as she feels, her bruised heart sending her brain signals to cry, to cling to him, to love him, love him, _love him_.

“I can’t do this again, Rio. I can’t love you again only for you to leave again. I can’t do it,” she chokes through her tears. 

He looks at her. Quietly. Moves his thumb over her cheekbone. Kisses her. Kisses her again.

His silence gets chatty. Defeats her. So she breaks, facing the unspoken.

The hurt is ripe as she tosses hope aside. The remains, grieving another almost—inside, in silence, _again_ —are not enough to bound or heal.

She carves a thought. It rushes without patience. Soaks down her body, seeping into tired bones that want to find rest in his arms.

If he loves her and if she loves him, why do they insist on silence? Why does he insist on leaving every single time? Why do they both feel tied to the illusion they must scrape at what they build each time they meet, like they’re starting afresh each time, like they won’t repeat this most wonderful mistake another fifty times over?

She digs the whimper down inside where a blasting hunger lives. 

He can’t give her more. He will leave again.

The knowledge sits there, next to her blunt affection and ever-surging desire.

They are only a loveless story after all.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i hope you felt something
> 
> thank you for reading and thank you for the beautiful response on the last chapter, i feel very warm and grateful ♡


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